His issue wasn’t a lack of friends. His problem, which lead to alcoholism, was explained to me by his former colleagues, primarily Doug Hay. Katz turned to his mother for comfort following Walter’s death. Unfortunately for him and his firm, he received none.
His buy-out of her shares was a poorly communicated effort to remove the business from between them and to attempt to salvage their familial bond. Hildegard instead saw it as a financial assault on herself and resorted to communicating with her own son through lawyers, even after the transaction was completed.
This piece paints her with typical maternal instinct and filial interest despite evidence neither existed once she saw her son’s ability to write, and then subsequently delete, her financial future. Given her reputation was well known I struggle to understand why she was repeatedly given this benefit of the doubt.
> His buy-out of her shares was a poorly communicated effort to remove the business from between them and to attempt to salvage their familial bond. Hildegard instead saw it as a financial assault on herself and resorted to communicating with her own son through lawyers, even after the transaction was completed.
Of course the action did not worked to salvage communication between them? How can one possibly expect better communication after hostile buyout and firing? Whatever her flaws as mother, the subsequent communication only through layers after that seems to me as not just expected, but even reasonable.
I mean, him doing that might have been rational business decision if she was doing job badly, I dont want to judge that. But expecting the relationships to improve after that sounds completely absurd.
It makes complete sense from a programmer's point of view. Refactor the relationship by deleting the troublesome elements, leaving behind what you want to keep.
The programmer and his friends then don't have a ground to complain that the other person in the relationship refactored the rest.
When you approach people as if they were things or code, then those people eventually have only one smart option left - cut you out. It is not because they are evil, but because they are hurt and protecting themselves from further hurt from you. And this approach does guarantee you will hurt them again and again.
His buy-out of her shares was a poorly communicated effort to remove the business from between them and to attempt to salvage their familial bond. Hildegard instead saw it as a financial assault on herself and resorted to communicating with her own son through lawyers, even after the transaction was completed.
This piece paints her with typical maternal instinct and filial interest despite evidence neither existed once she saw her son’s ability to write, and then subsequently delete, her financial future. Given her reputation was well known I struggle to understand why she was repeatedly given this benefit of the doubt.